


A Two-Piece Puzzle

by HenryMercury



Category: The Wicked + The Divine
Genre: Alternate Universes, Drug Use, F/F, Ficlet Collection, Garden of Eden, Haunting, Morning After, POV Alternating, References to the Beatles, Volumes 1 + 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-07-20
Packaged: 2018-07-24 14:01:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7511122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HenryMercury/pseuds/HenryMercury
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A very mixed bag of Luci/Laura moments.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. God's Work

**Author's Note:**

> This little bundle is essentially me trying to write the post-Faust Act grief out of myself.

In the beginning, there was contradiction. God made everything, and He made it perfect, and He made it to fall apart. He made it to be questioned and forbade questioning. He made the wondrous garden and wasted it on humankind. He made Eve and wasted her on Adam.

If contradiction was the essence of this creation, Lucifer mused, then that truth should be illuminated for all. (As God Himself said, there should be light.)

And so Lucifer ventured into the garden in disguise. The snake: smooth, pale and covered in scales that patterned together perfectly like hardened feathers. Designed to move flat-bellied across the ground and still a higher sort of creature than Man, in Lucifer's regard. Man thought too highly of himself. Man had been told by God that he should rule over everything, and had made the ridiculous mistake of believing he _deserved_ to.

Lucifer approached Woman instead. So-called Eve, made from a rib, a wishbone, the only part of Adam that Lucifer had yet decided she mightn't despise. Eyes, full of interest and conflict, flickered over Lucifer as the snake's forked tongue did its work. She admired the little speckles on the woman's nose and cheeks—not flaws but decoration, like the tiny flowers that rose up from the grass. A brown hand, shivering with trepidation and confidence at once, reached out to take the fruit from the tree that God made edible but forbade the eating of. The woman: as full of contradiction as anything else in creation.

Fingers wrapped around the red hide of the fruit and Lucifer admired those, almost wished that she could possess them too. The serpent was not so satisfactory anymore. She would take another form next time.

It took no small amount of effort to split the thick-skinned, heavy fruit in half, starting from the pointed crown at its top. Its blood dripped from those brown hands in a way that should have made Lucifer shudder in disgust, but instead suggested to her what God had seemed to say to Himself when He laid eyes upon the completed Adam—that there was beauty in mess and imperfection and the breaking of things. Lucifer still did not see it _all_ , but in Eve she caught her first glimpse.

Eve sucked ruby seeds into her mouth and her eyes widened, and she was more beautiful then than when God made her because she _knew_. Lucifer knew what it was to do God's work; she had, after all, done it obediently once. Eve buried her tongue in the pomegranate and Lucifer watched, knowing that she had done God's work yet again—just more bravely than God himself.


	2. Momentum

You're listening to Bowie when you spot her. The chorus of _Moonage Daydream_ is sending your imagination somewhere high and ambitious, out into the cosmos, and your first thought is that the song and the sight of her match awfully well.

She's sitting, one long leg crossed over the other, on a brick wall around the side of the Faculty of Science. It's a no-smoking area, but it's clear she doesn't care about that. You don't really smoke, but if you did you wouldn't care about the rules either.

You're walking off the main pathway before you even realise it, boots stomping through a gap in the garden bed where many have made the short-cut before you. To be honest, you've been looking for a reason not to attend today's class all morning. It's just been the kind of bland sluggish day that doesn't offer up any one thing that shines brighter than the rest, where it makes as much sense to take your meds and go through the motions as it does to try and shake the monotony.

Smoke twists up through the air above short, slick hair. Blonde, except for a neat stripe of black. It makes your unbrushed morning frizz, your washed-out green ends, feel like even more of a mess.

It occurs to you that you've no idea what you'll say to the handsome stranger when you make it to the little space she's claimed as hers. You don't slow down to try and plan anything, though. It's one of those times, the ones where the gap in your knowledge is filled up by the certainty that the right words will come to you when you need them. Your heartbeat has risen slightly. It's a welcome break from all the numb.

You follow the footpath around a tall hedge and stop short as soon as you make it around the corner. You're looking right at the place where the girl should be sitting, but she's nowhere in sight. You look around, search for that all-white figure, but she's nowhere. At the very least you should be able to see her back as she walks away; there's no way anyone could disappear in two second like this.

Jesus, maybe you've started seeing things. Hallucinating. Maybe it's the meds acting up in some new way. You used to go to school with a girl who said she could see the devil sometimes. Part of you thinks going mad would be better than just seeing what's really here.

Now that you're off the path to your tutorial, it feels like too much effort to get back on it. The momentum is gone. You turn your back to the brick wall, flatten your palms against the top and haul yourself up to sit on it, like the girl in white had been. You sit and breathe and listen to the sounds of people making their way to and from classes. There's a breeze picking up, doing its best to blow your hair into your eyes and mouth and everywhere until you start to wish you'd grabbed an elastic on your way out of the house. You still don't move. It's as easy to be here right now as it is to be anywhere else. You half wish you had a cigarette just to give the moment some purpose.

Something rustles nearby, the sound that discarded cardboard chip packets make skating across concrete paths on a windy day. There's a box of cigarettes sitting not far from your hand you swear wasn't there before. The lid has flipped up and is tapping back and forth with the movement of the air. The box is at least half full. It looks crisp, not squashed or soggy or dirty, and you pull a cigarette out curiously, watching on as your hands move just to see how far they'll actually go. You hold the little roll between your fingers. There's something about it that makes you feel cooler, more composed, even though you know it's all advertising, all lies, that created that notion.  

You've got a lighter somewhere in your bag, you're sure. You hold the cig between your lips while you fumble around all the garbage that accumulates in the bottom. The lighter doesn't reveal itself, and eventually you give up.

You put the cigarette down on the bricks beside you and shut your eyes, contemplate just napping right here for a couple of hours. Any place you can actually get to sleep. You breathe the cool air until, a minute later, you start to smell smoke.


	3. Eleanor Rigby

The wedding is nice enough, thought it's too pious for my tastes—too focused on resisting, abstaining, submitting. The pews are populated with people I don't know. I'm only there because my Dad knows the groom's father (and because there is an open bar). The wine is good, even if the barman recognises me after four glasses and starts flashing me the most disapproving looks. The joke's on him: I've long been immune to disapproval. He cuts me off after eight glasses, though, which hurts substantially more than the looks.

I go home and get changed before returning to the church, trash bags at the ready. Any work I can scrounge up is work I'll happily take at the moment; the Beatles are touring again and I absolutely will not miss out on seeing them in the flesh again, no matter how broke I am after tickets. I have to hear their new songs without the crackle of my old junk record player obscuring anything. I have to hear all the little unique variations of an individual performance that listening to the same LPs over and over makes me crave.

I step inside the church broom in hand and find someone else already there, picking up the rice. Dad didn't tell me his friend had hired another girl to clean up too. I hope I won't be getting half what he promised to pay me. From the way the girl starts when she hears me enter, she hasn't been expecting company either.

I say, "hi." I say, "I'm Laura."

"Ellie," she replies, voice quiet, smooth in a way that's slightly raspy. I like it. I also like the bright blue gaze she turns on me. She has very short hair, the kind my ma would say belonged on a soldier not the girl he comes home to. My ma would say that a haircut like this says things about a woman's preferences. Usually it annoys me when she says looking a certain way means without a doubt that a girl's a queer, that having shorter hair somehow _makes_ her that way. I have hair long enough to put up in curls and it hasn't made _me_ any _less_ a queer than I am. Despite all those principled thoughts, I can't help but hope the crap Ma says about hair is true in this instance. That this girl might like other girls, might consider liking me. I imagine the looks I'd get to see on my parents' faces if I brought home a tall white girl with hair like a blonde Elvis, and I smile. Dad hates Elvis, says he's just a white version of music that's been out there all along. True though that is, the pompadour is a thing I can't help but like.

"Was it a nice wedding?" Ellie asks.

I say, "sure it was."

Ellie lets out a low little laugh. I feel the sound up and down my spine. "You don't sound all that convinced," she says.

"It was very... traditional."

"Ah. Not a stickler for The Way Things Have Always Been, then?"

I consider telling her that one look at me ought to tell her that much, but the question seems to go deeper, so I swallow that urge.

"It's not a good enough reason to keep bad things as they are."

"You're a clever girl," Ellie decides. "What's a girl like you doing sweeping up after such a _traditional_ wedding?"

"Getting paid. I need to see the Beatles again."

Ellie chuckles. "Of course," she smiles, though there's something a little sad in it, I think. Maybe she's never seen them play.

"Have you gone to any of their shows before?" I ask.

Ellie nods. "My parents are... somewhat involved. I've met the band on various occasions. McCartney wrote a song about me, in fact."

"You're kidding." She's lying to me. She must be—but she does it so compellingly I want to hear more anyway.

"My last name happens to be Rigby."

_Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in a church where a wedding has been, lives in a dream_

"Say I believe you," I start out. "Why would they write such a sad story about you?"

"We didn't end up seeing eye to eye," Ellie shrugs. "Are you a fan of the Rolling Stones, or are you one of the staunch side-takers?"

I haven't listened to as much of the Stones—I've heard them around of course, but I don't have any of their records. It's not that I've got anything against them, and I tell her so.

"I'll lend you _Out of Our Heads_ ," she declares. "That's my favourite."

"I... thank you?"

"Why's that sound so much like a question?"

"You don't know me at all, and you're giving me your music."

"Lending," Ellie corrects. "You have to return it, see. That's my price. A second look at you." Her gaze is suddenly more intense, like her eyes are trying to say all the things nobody's supposed to say out loud except in private.

"Sounds like a bargain," I reply, and I can feel myself flushing.

"I live just down the street. You can come and get it now if you like," she jabs a thumb towards the door, like we could just _get outta here_ , like it's that easy. I still don't even know why this girl, this Ellie Rigby, is loitering in the church in the first place.

I look at the mess still needing to be cleaned up, rice and decorations and some leaves that were swept in through the large doors when they were open.

"Don't get me wrong," I start to explain, "I'd love to. Really. But I do have to clean all this up."

"How could I forget," Ellie winks. Just as the heat in my face had started to subside, too. "Well, it's not like I've got anything better to do."

"You don't have to help."

"I don't intend to, doll. You have to earn that ticket yourself. But there's no hardship in keeping a pretty girl company." Ellie saunters over to the frontmost pew and sits, swinging her feet up onto it, white heeled sandals and all. Then she pulls a cigarette from her pocket. I can't see matches but the cherry burns seconds later so she must have them with her too.

"How reverant of you."

"I can think of more irreverant things to do in here," Ellie replies, smile sharp.

I decide not to push in case I end up falling over myself.

"You're no regular here," Ellie changes the subject as I get back to sweeping up the grains of rice.

"No. Are you?"

"I don't _attend_ , but I see what goes on."

"What's there to see?"

"A whole multitude of ordinary things. The funerals, for instance, vary a lot," Ellie muses. "Some people get a turnout of hundreds, others get a handful. Do you ever think about how you'll die and it's perfectly likely nobody will come to bury you?"

I frown, because the words should sound like some kind of melodrama, but they don't. They're perfectly earnest, neither thickened with angst nor masked by brittle humour. They are matter of fact. I wonder which came first; this thought or the song.

"I'd come," I tell her, just as earnest. I don't know her but I already like her enough that I'd be sad if she were gone. "I'd come to see you off. I would."

I keep the part of my brain that, if it had its way, would be contemplating just how sparse an affair my own funeral would be under lock and key. If I was buried tomorrow then I guess this church wouldn't be empty; my parents would be there. But I don't know who else would be. Just my parents and the echoes of their wet choked breaths in the high-roofed hall. If that. If I introduce them to Ellie they might not even show up.

But life's too short, isn't it? Too short to be spent trying to ensure a turnout at your funeral. What would the point in that be?


	4. The Fall

The woman, the one Laura fucked last night, is smoking a morning cigarette out on the balcony. (One of many, Laura guesses.) She's dressed in nothing but her white shirt, lazily buttoned somewhere around the navel, and her calvins. Long, pale legs stretch on forever, the toe-tips of one bare foot tapping absentmindedly as she leans against the railing, looking down at the city rushing twelve storeys down. She hangs her head out over the barrier like she's contemplating the fall.

Laura stands naked in the woman's apartment looking at her back through the open sliding door. She's clutching her underwear in one hand, crumpled little dress in the other, the task of redressing forgotten. Waking up, she'd expected awkwardness, wanted to clothe herself and leave—but leaving has lost its appeal.

Laura doesn't remember the woman's name, much to her own dismay. The wicked tongue that undid her the previous night hadn't wasted any time trying to spell it out. Whatever it is, she's certain it's a name worth remembering.

The woman turns around and Laura's spying eyes are caught by bright blue, smudged all around with dark makeup that somehow looks even better after a long night. The dark streak in the woman's hair has fallen down onto her forehead. She holds the cig between her lips, just left of centre, for a moment while her hand moves to brush the strand back up where it belongs. She gives Laura a little smile. It's sharp and hungry but it also seems full of promise; promise that Laura will enjoy it very much indeed when this woman chases down her own satisfaction.  

In the moment that follows, something in Laura's head seems to click into place. She doesn't know whether something comes to her through last night's haze of booze and sex, some half-memory of an introduction, or whether the name just comes to her because it seems so inexplicably _right_.

Lucifer holds up her half-smoked cigarette, and it's all Laura can do to pull her dress haphazardly over herself before she's drawn out to take the next drag.


	5. Eleven

"What are we?" Laura asked.

"Doomed? Damned? Ticking time bombs?" Luci suggested.

Laura batted at her shoulder gently, scolding. She was going to have to try harder than that if she wanted to reprimand the devil; gods and men had been trying since more or less the beginning of time. Her parents had been trying since the first cigarette they caught her smoking at thirteen. Hell, even her dealer gave her worried looks, like he was seeing a ghost, or at least somebody right about to be one. Luci knew well enough what he was seeing. _Why do you think I need the cocaine?_ she wanted to ask.

"You _know_ what I mean," Laura said. Laura, who didn't even judge. Who just admired anyone with the audacity to turn life up to eleven and watch it catch fire. Who didn't believe in long-term investments.

Luci did know what she had meant, and the real answer was a rare truth in an existence where truths were almost as difficult to find as tongues willing to speak them. Pleasant truths, anyway. Sometimes, the Father of Lies liked to tell a truth just to fuck with someone. Just to watch that truth be met with as much, often more, incredulity than a lie. Lies, of course, could be perfectly tailored to the ears they were destined for. Truths were less flexible.

"I suspect we're two people who like the way we look reflected in each other's eyes."

The answer was enough to satisfy Laura, it seemed. After all, it wasn't visions of chasing adopted toddlers around a grassy yard she was after. It wasn't far-off promises, suburbia, the decline of a perpetual Sunday afternoon. The things called bliss, called heaven, were not her desired destination. And it was just as well.

"Lie still," Luci instructed, and Laura did, allowing her to lay a line of white powder out, striking against the dark brown of Laura's bare abs.

Laura herself preferred to smoke. The pungent spirals matched her hair, Luci thought; always curling, moving, always beautiful, always so hypnotic in the light.

"Put some music on," Laura mumbled. "Last playlist ended ages ago."

Luci got up and took the opportunity to put some Stones on. Laura's playlists were full of Rihanna lately, which was fine, but on certain days reminded Luci too much of Sakhmet. (Rihanna was better than the time Laura played The Fray on repeat after Luci's first almost-overdose since they'd met. Luci still wondered whether Laura blames herself for it, somehow, if only because she'd never seemed to blame Luci. Luci didn't blame anyone or anything in particular; it was an occupational hazard. Too much of anything in life killed, and the good stuff simply hit harder.)

"Again?" Laura groaned, recognising the opening beats of _Sympathy For The Devil_.

"You love it."

"Only for you," Laura sighed as she spread herself out across the bed, making it impossible for Luci to climb back on without lying across one of Laura's limbs or another. She chose the right arm, and nestled into Laura's side as Mick-Jagger-the-devil began to introduce himself. To be held like that was not something she usually cared for. _Only for you_ , she thought, as Laura blew a gentle stream of smoke out in front of both their faces, up towards the ceiling.


	6. A Haunting

This isn't the fun kind of voyeurism.

After the whole thing with Ananke, the whole thing with losing my head more literally than ever before, I'm dangling here by the proverbial skin of my teeth, tethered to the little piece of power I gave to Laura. A haunter, bearing witness to all manner of private things.

Mostly I witness grief. More of it than I ever imagined anyone'd feel when I went, if I'm perfectly honest. They'd miss Lucifer, sure, but they'd have Lucifer again before another century was out, so the mourning would never be _that_ final. But me, the hybrid Luci-and-Eleanor... I didn't expect the grief to be _personal_.

I see Laura double over puking after people mention my name. Any of my names. She retches so violently that in certain painful moments I nearly start to wish everybody'd stop talking about me so much. (The thought is ludicrous, of course. Wanting my name on fewer tongues. Have I suffered some sort of brain injury? Don't answer that.) I hear her put _Play With Fire_ on repeat for so goddamn long even I get sick of it. I watch on as her next period comes early and she panics at waking up amongst bloodied sheets. I watch as she strips off—snivelling, shuddering; not a sexy nakedness at all, I'm afraid—and for the next half-hour scrubs her skin long past the point at which the sticky red has gone. She's scrubbing at memories, now, and if she's not careful she'll scrub right through herself. Funny just how long a quick splattering of brain matter stains a person.

So no, it isn't the fun kind of voyeurism at all.

I concentrate hard on how great it'd be if Sakhmet or Inanna were to come over and, like the miracle-doers we're all supposed to be, turn the shitshow into something more satisfying for an onlooker like me. Either of them, or both—if even the _thought_ of them would make its way into Laura's mind and inspire her to have a little happy time between her own thighs I'd be pleased. It certainly wouldn't bother me seeing her with the others, even when I never did get a taste myself. I'm really _not_ a jealous god; jealousy is a weakness I exploit in others at every opportunity. I'm with Inanna when it comes to the more being the merrier.

Devastatingly, it appears that ghost powers don't include instigating orgies.

It's three in the morning. The devil's hour, as they say. Laura's stirring in her sleep, a hot water bottle pressed against her belly that's been there since the beginning of the afternoon nap she never woke from. There's no way it's actually hot anymore.

The little groans she lets out are loud in the stillness. A nightmare, probably. I wonder if she's dreaming of me; I have heard her mutter my name before. I should be pleased to appear in any dream—any attention is good attention, after all—but I'd like it if her subconscious would picture me with attractively rumpled hair and freshly bruised skin, smoking a post-coital cigarette with one hand and tracing along the smooth round side of her breast with the other.

It can't even really count if she's picturing me without a head on my shoulders, can it?

Against my better judgement, I move to touch (inasmuch as I can touch anything in my current state) the hot water bottle. If I were fully myself it'd be a cinch to heat it back up: I could snap my fingers and be done. I press the palm of my hand against the flat side and concentrate. I can't feel the temperature myself, but I imagine it rising.

Consigned to hope.

I hate it.

But then Laura's restlessness settles down. She shifts to cradle the bottle against her body, and for the first time in a very long time I have the slightest taste of faith.

**Author's Note:**

> You can also find me as henrymercury on [tumblr](http://henrymercury.tumblr.com/).


End file.
